religion," says Fot, "returns
among men, until he embraces it."

The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated--that Fot
was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were the
Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*

* This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
the declarations of Georgi? See upon this subject, Beausob.
Hist. du Manicheisme.

But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of
Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even
from their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known
through the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era;
that their name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta,
or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*

* The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
they confound him. It is certain that his doctrine
notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
Samaneans. See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
greater antiquity. If, as is the case, the doctrine of
Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
"I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
now return. Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
is: this life is only death."--Chalcidius in Thinaeum.

Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans. Farther, Hermes